What Luck Is This
by K9Lasko
Summary: "You are lucky," they say. (Tag to S10E21 "Berlin." Caution: Somebody is dead.)


**Story Notes: **Tag to S10E21 "Berlin." I've taken considerable creative license. **Caution: Somebody is dead.  
**

**What Luck Is This**

"You are lucky," they say as you lie here nearly broken in two. (Broken in more ways than just one.) Broken in _countless_ ways and left to lie meekly at the feet of those who support you. There's nowhere left to charge, no amount of bravery or anger or stubborn resolution with which you can gain your retribution. You have tried, you have failed, and you have lost what you had barely gained. Now you have nothing. Now you have less than what you had started with.

You learned your lesson. You are cowed by your adversaries and humbled by a flesh and blood body that does not - cannot - do your spirit justice. God has taught you just as you know He always would. Rage begets rage. Revenge begets revenge. You should have known better, but this is all you've known.

"You are lucky," they say again. Again and again as subsequent days slide by into what could have been a week. Two weeks. All of those hours spent clinging to this Earth. Minutes marching by heralding nothing but a vacuum, and you think you'll never recover. Never. Not fully.

But when you feel yourself flagging, they say it again. "You are lucky." A placatory statement. A bookmark for some other sentiment, perhaps. You're alive. You're alive. Be grateful you're alive. You could be dead. Dead. Very, very dead.

You blink at your new world. Four walls. Wall-mounted television. You mouth at blue Jell-O. You tolerate baths given by strangers. You are trapped on a bed, suffering from a phantom ache that has nothing to do with your crushed chest. Look at this. (Look at you.) Once a wild creature driven by emotion and independence and instinct; now just a shadow, a living ghost, humiliated daily and tethered to your new inadequacies. Friends pass by, stop in, settle slowly onto the room's only chair. Worried faces, quiet words. Gonna be okay. _Gonna be okay._

Rage begot rage. Yet you still want to taste it, even if it's gone sour. Here you are, mind still working despite your body's reluctance. The more you think, the more you despise yourself because after metal had slammed into metal, after flesh and skull had slammed into glass, you thought only one thing. (I have to find Bodnar. I have to find Bodnar, and I have to kill Bodnar, and I will do anything, _endure_ anything, to meet that end.) Maybe it was a rote response or maybe it was an indication of who you truly are, at your most basic. But that was your final thought. You cannot take it back.

Who are you? What are you? An instrument of anger, of revenge, of single-minded violence? Are you no better than those who wrap themselves in crudely improvised explosives? A living, breathing weapon?

No, no. You are your father's daughter. You are his creation, and you have been wronged in so many ways. You have no regard for men who know better but still tag along anyway. (Men like Tony. Men who are Tony.) Is that not right? Tail-wagging loyalty. Calm aplomb. No, you need edgy. Dangerous. Is that not right? (Men unlike Tony. Men who are not Tony.)

You know it's a moo point. (No, a _moot point_.) After all this. Metal against metal. Bone against glass. And to think, it should have been you getting scraped off that window. What a fickle thing luck is. Arbitrary. Unjust. You thought you'd be willing to give anything and everything for just a taste of that revenge. Something to sink your teeth into. But it's a tough lesson to swallow.

Maybe (that night, in that intersection) DiNozzo had finally learned his lesson, too. Whatever he saw in you kept him coming and going but always, _always_ coming back again. In constant orbit and desperate for that affirmation. Foolish. He is foolish. Was. _Was_.

Shame on you, Ziva David, because you loved him despite that bur-like nature. You fell for it like he knew you would. (He was relentless, relentless, relentless, relentless.)

You're all played out in the grief department, so the only thing that comes is choking nausea. (Now, you refuse to eat.) Waves of sentiment crash against the jetty of your impervious shoreline. The morphine pumps through your veins. It dulls the physical agony, but does nothing for your soul.

Gibbs' promises mean nothing. You have already baldly wept in front of him. This mentor. This once-father. You've captured his pity in several ways, and you've prompted rare emotion from an otherwise stoic rock. He tells you that Tony did not go gently into whatever dusk was waiting for him. As if that would inspire something in you. As if that would settle you in this new reality. As if hearing of his mettle while dying of a broken skull would satisfy. (When does the fight stop and meaningless suffering begin?) No, that is the sort of thing that comforts Gibbs, and you are glad he at least has that.

You don't want to listen as McGee tells you that Bodnar is gone. He has vanished into thin air. Again. With help, seemingly. He sits and touches your hand, and you want to both rip it away and hug him. You can't decide which. He looks lost; the rock he's been clinging to has started to crumble under his feet. That little frown has made itself a permanent fixture. He's suffering, too, you know. He's been picking at his cuticles; they are bloody and swollen.

You wonder why he's not consumed with that familiar rage, that familiar lust with revenge. You want to ask him, but you don't. Maybe he's been down that road already. Maybe worry and anxiety is a better avenue. (He tells you that they don't even know if it's Bodnar who's caused all this trouble.) You tell him to go away. Go away. Stay away.

The pleasure of taking someone's life is not for McGee. He doesn't know the taste of it, and you have been denied it. You tried so hard. You failed. They took the diamonds. They took Tony, your friend, your pseudo lover. And then they ran.

Still, you are lucky. Because you are alive. (Stuck in this bed. Nearly broken in two.)

"I want to go after him," you repeat again, voice drugged and slurring. "I want to kill him. He needs to die."

"You need to rest," they say. "You're lucky to be alive."

What luck is this, you think. What luck is this?


End file.
